At home I'm a lazy idiot, and run Outlook Express. Yes, I know its a security nightmare, but its behind a firewall, and I'm at least vaguely cautious about opening strange emails.
Even this, post XP-SP2 refuses to load images until I ask it to. Tracking dots are stuffed now.
The best one of those was when I actually got my mobile out in the shop and started phoning their competitors over the road to see if they had the product I wanted in stock.
Precisely - the real reason I think Best Buy are going to come to regret this is that they've just come out publically and promoted themselves with the following effective slogan:
Are you an intelligent person? If so, fuck off to somewhere else, we only want lazy idiots through our doors.
Its good sense to think this, since idiots can be fleeced for their life savings. But saying it in public is another matter.
I don't know about you lot, but my LCD monitor is an awful lot larger than my hard drive. Surely all those extra heads are going to be really expensive, too?
The thing is, I looked through a bunch of them trying to figure out exactly what Konfabulator was (given that the story provided no info, and their 'information' page is a dead link).
Everything looks remarkably like what Samurize does.
Apart from the significant difference that Apple products are often rather good in terms of underlying quality, I'd say that Bose is very much the Apple of the audio world, really. People buy them because they look really, really cool, are backed with good marketing and have a nicely simple front-end, despite the fact that they could buy another product (ref. an iRiver H-series) that does the core job better and has more features for the same price.
"10% on cables!! Ha! If you're only spending $500-1000 on a system, just use the cables that come with the speakers... I've never met anyone that can tell the difference between cables on a mid-range system."
I'd definitely disagree with that. While you're right that once you get into the realms of several thousand dollars 10% may be too much, the difference between the prepackaged cables and some $30 interconnects, or good $10/m speaker cable is really noticeable.
I'm guessing those numbers, by the way; being based in the UK I can't recommend enough the idea of at least getting the £6/m QED Silver Anniversary speaker cable, and some Cambridge Audio Pacific interconnects.
The other thing that really affects the 10% rule is what sort of components you're buying. It sounds like you're a stereophile kind of guy, with just a deck (or CD transport), amp and speakers. Once your system includes a surround setup or multiple sources the number of wires goes through the roof, and so your budget for them should probably follow.
Among those Americas who are prepared to fill out an online survey.
Given that it generally seems to be the more tech-geeky places online (like here) where I see the most avid Democrats, its entirely possible we're seeing another bias here.
'In a regular column in The Guardian newspaper's Saturday TV listings magazine, Charlie Brooker described Bush in scathing terms, and concluded: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr., where are you now that we need you?"'
Lemme guess, you're not a fan of The Guide, are you?
Brooker's column regularly advocates the violent and painful death of everyone from Paris Hilton to Jeremy Clarkson. I doubt very much he's saying any of it for more than comic hyperbole.
For instance, when was the last time a Liberal Leftie opened an article on Queer Eye with the phrase "Shirtlifters of the world - unite and take over"?
If you really care that much, he apologises profusely to any Americans moronically stupid enough to take him seriously in the following week's column.
How do you get where you want in seconds on a CD? By using the track skip function.
What is broken on the box is having to do the kludge mentioned by several here of turning all your tracks into one giant mp3, not the fact that movement within a track is 'only' 10x speed (about the same as my CD player's ffwd function, by the way).
That's one of the things I really, really hate about the iPod and co. I've got several mix discs myself, split into tracks but designed to be played gapless.
Piece of cake on CD, utterly impossible on practically every mp3 player. Stupid, really. I can't stand the kludge of turning it into one giant mp3 and just 'remembering' where the track indexes are.
So the forward-scan button gives you a 10x speed ffw. And? Why is this bad?
But then, I'm not getting my head round having single mp3 files that are 60 minutes long either, so that might explain it. I mean, there's Eno's Neroli, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.
Irrespective of that particular piece of "damning evidence", I'm more swayed by the actual Police coming out and saying that there is NO, repeat NO link between the game and the murder, and that said media are a bunch of fecking liars for claiming otherwise (note - "fecking liars" may not have been the exact choice of words used in the statement. However, its pretty close to that).
The poor kid was killed as part of a mugging that went wrong. The mugging was planned in order to get cash to pay the perpertrator's drug debts. Curious how the addiction to illegal substances is completely bypassed in a search for blame here.
The thing with Canon ink cartridges (I've got an i350) is that they're actually pretty reasonably priced - 5.99 in the UK, rather than 23.99 for the HP.
So I just don't bother going down the refill route.
Well, I've done a thorough survey of the, ooh, 30-something files on my PC currently.
~20 tracks downloaded straight from the official Underworld website (i.e. live things they've given away)
The remainder are all obscure 12" singles that I downloaded from P2P just to make sure, before handing over the rather painfully high sums they demand second-hand. So, while not a penny of that money made it back to the record company, its their own lookout, frankly - I'd just as soon give them a fiver for a nice fresh pressing as hunt down an old copy somewhere for several times that.
"The critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation video device"
An iPod already works just fine, thanks, under XP. So he can't really be talking about the first possibility. So why is he so convinced that a "Next Generation Video Device" is going to be the launchpad to persuade me to upgrade my Walkman? What have "video devices" of any generation got to do with music listening on the move?
Weird. I'm guessing the next Microsoft Music Store will actually be XBox Live.
That is, unfortunately, something of a generalisation. Firstly, even a good SUV doesn't stand much chance up against a 40ft lorry. But secondly, many "SUV"s aren't even very good in accidents; many of them are no better (or even worse) than the equivalent saloon.
Land Rover Discoveries are utterly dire, to give one popular example; you're much better off in a little Renault.
Thanks anyway/. - as much as I love ThinkGeek's stuff, the import duties here in the UK are an absolute killer. Between shipping and duty (and then even duty on the shipping!) stuff costs more than twice as much as it does for you US types.
I still love going to the Cinema - no matter how much I upgrade my home system its still not the same. Sure, you can be unlucky and get idiot talkers occasionally, but bad framing (my number one old complaint) has been almost completely eradicated since the studios' piracy worries have led to staff actually being present in the booth again.
However, I've just recently become a Dad, and getting the opportunity to go out to the pictures is a rare and precious thing reserved for something really exciting. Even before then, there are so many films coming out I don't have time to see them, so I do a lot of catching up on DVD.
Yep, the girly scream is gone. It only got there in the first place by accident - its always been there on the sound mix for the 70mm prints, which they used as the basis of the '97 release.
"Laserdisc still rips the shit out of DVD, though- especially for cartoons."
What makes you say that? I'll certainly grant you that early DVDs were far inferior to the best that laserdisc has to offer (Twister, SE7EN before the 2-disc remaster, Red October, Face Off and so on), and if by "cartoons" you mean the horribly over-processed Snow White and Lion King DVDs then I'll agree there, too, but for most things I'd take the DVD over the laserdisc any day, and twice on Sundays. Even the traditional Gold Standard of laser image, the SE Star Wars Trilogy box, is utterly, utterly blown away by the image on the new DVDs.
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At home I'm a lazy idiot, and run Outlook Express. Yes, I know its a security nightmare, but its behind a firewall, and I'm at least vaguely cautious about opening strange emails.
Even this, post XP-SP2 refuses to load images until I ask it to. Tracking dots are stuffed now.
The best one of those was when I actually got my mobile out in the shop and started phoning their competitors over the road to see if they had the product I wanted in stock.
The guy shut the hell up pretty damn sharpish...
Precisely - the real reason I think Best Buy are going to come to regret this is that they've just come out publically and promoted themselves with the following effective slogan:
Are you an intelligent person?
If so, fuck off to somewhere else, we only want lazy idiots through our doors.
Its good sense to think this, since idiots can be fleeced for their life savings. But saying it in public is another matter.
I don't know about you lot, but my LCD monitor is an awful lot larger than my hard drive. Surely all those extra heads are going to be really expensive, too?
The thing is, I looked through a bunch of them trying to figure out exactly what Konfabulator was (given that the story provided no info, and their 'information' page is a dead link).
Everything looks remarkably like what Samurize does.
Apart from the significant difference that Apple products are often rather good in terms of underlying quality, I'd say that Bose is very much the Apple of the audio world, really. People buy them because they look really, really cool, are backed with good marketing and have a nicely simple front-end, despite the fact that they could buy another product (ref. an iRiver H-series) that does the core job better and has more features for the same price.
"10% on cables!! Ha! If you're only spending $500-1000 on a system, just use the cables that come with the speakers... I've never met anyone that can tell the difference between cables on a mid-range system."
I'd definitely disagree with that. While you're right that once you get into the realms of several thousand dollars 10% may be too much, the difference between the prepackaged cables and some $30 interconnects, or good $10/m speaker cable is really noticeable.
I'm guessing those numbers, by the way; being based in the UK I can't recommend enough the idea of at least getting the £6/m QED Silver Anniversary speaker cable, and some Cambridge Audio Pacific interconnects.
The other thing that really affects the 10% rule is what sort of components you're buying. It sounds like you're a stereophile kind of guy, with just a deck (or CD transport), amp and speakers. Once your system includes a surround setup or multiple sources the number of wires goes through the roof, and so your budget for them should probably follow.
Or, to be more accurate,
Among those Americas who are prepared to fill out an online survey.
Given that it generally seems to be the more tech-geeky places online (like here) where I see the most avid Democrats, its entirely possible we're seeing another bias here.
'In a regular column in The Guardian newspaper's Saturday TV listings magazine, Charlie Brooker described Bush in scathing terms, and concluded: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr., where are you now that we need you?"'
Lemme guess, you're not a fan of The Guide, are you?
Brooker's column regularly advocates the violent and painful death of everyone from Paris Hilton to Jeremy Clarkson. I doubt very much he's saying any of it for more than comic hyperbole.
For instance, when was the last time a Liberal Leftie opened an article on Queer Eye with the phrase "Shirtlifters of the world - unite and take over"?
If you really care that much, he apologises profusely to any Americans moronically stupid enough to take him seriously in the following week's column.
How do you get where you want in seconds on a CD? By using the track skip function.
What is broken on the box is having to do the kludge mentioned by several here of turning all your tracks into one giant mp3, not the fact that movement within a track is 'only' 10x speed (about the same as my CD player's ffwd function, by the way).
That's one of the things I really, really hate about the iPod and co. I've got several mix discs myself, split into tracks but designed to be played gapless.
Piece of cake on CD, utterly impossible on practically every mp3 player. Stupid, really. I can't stand the kludge of turning it into one giant mp3 and just 'remembering' where the track indexes are.
Aaah, I see. Every eBook I've ever seen came broken down into couple-of-minute chapters, so this never occurred to me. How do you remember your place?
So the forward-scan button gives you a 10x speed ffw. And? Why is this bad?
But then, I'm not getting my head round having single mp3 files that are 60 minutes long either, so that might explain it. I mean, there's Eno's Neroli, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.
The real reason so many people pirate music is because players cost too much.
If Apple reduced the price of an iPod to $50, then no-one would bother pirating mp3 files, would they?
Ballmer really does confuse me sometimes.
Irrespective of that particular piece of "damning evidence", I'm more swayed by the actual Police coming out and saying that there is NO, repeat NO link between the game and the murder, and that said media are a bunch of fecking liars for claiming otherwise (note - "fecking liars" may not have been the exact choice of words used in the statement. However, its pretty close to that).
The poor kid was killed as part of a mugging that went wrong. The mugging was planned in order to get cash to pay the perpertrator's drug debts. Curious how the addiction to illegal substances is completely bypassed in a search for blame here.
The thing with Canon ink cartridges (I've got an i350) is that they're actually pretty reasonably priced - 5.99 in the UK, rather than 23.99 for the HP.
So I just don't bother going down the refill route.
"AUDI - Accelerates Under Demonic Influence."
"Fiat: Fix it again, Tony!"
To which can always be added the classics -
FORD - Fix Or Repair Daily
LOTUS - Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious, and
TVR - Terrible Vehicle Reliability.
The Grandparent explained that they themselves run Linux at home. Cleaning up the infected Windows machines of others is their job.
Well, I've done a thorough survey of the, ooh, 30-something files on my PC currently.
~20 tracks downloaded straight from the official Underworld website (i.e. live things they've given away)
The remainder are all obscure 12" singles that I downloaded from P2P just to make sure, before handing over the rather painfully high sums they demand second-hand. So, while not a penny of that money made it back to the record company, its their own lookout, frankly - I'd just as soon give them a fiver for a nice fresh pressing as hunt down an old copy somewhere for several times that.
Woah, horsey. Let's back up there a moment.
"The critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation video device"
An iPod already works just fine, thanks, under XP. So he can't really be talking about the first possibility. So why is he so convinced that a "Next Generation Video Device" is going to be the launchpad to persuade me to upgrade my Walkman? What have "video devices" of any generation got to do with music listening on the move?
Weird. I'm guessing the next Microsoft Music Store will actually be XBox Live.
That is, unfortunately, something of a generalisation. Firstly, even a good SUV doesn't stand much chance up against a 40ft lorry. But secondly, many "SUV"s aren't even very good in accidents; many of them are no better (or even worse) than the equivalent saloon.
Land Rover Discoveries are utterly dire, to give one popular example; you're much better off in a little Renault.
Thanks anyway /. - as much as I love ThinkGeek's stuff, the import duties here in the UK are an absolute killer. Between shipping and duty (and then even duty on the shipping!) stuff costs more than twice as much as it does for you US types.
I still love going to the Cinema - no matter how much I upgrade my home system its still not the same. Sure, you can be unlucky and get idiot talkers occasionally, but bad framing (my number one old complaint) has been almost completely eradicated since the studios' piracy worries have led to staff actually being present in the booth again.
However, I've just recently become a Dad, and getting the opportunity to go out to the pictures is a rare and precious thing reserved for something really exciting. Even before then, there are so many films coming out I don't have time to see them, so I do a lot of catching up on DVD.
Yep, the girly scream is gone. It only got there in the first place by accident - its always been there on the sound mix for the 70mm prints, which they used as the basis of the '97 release.
"Laserdisc still rips the shit out of DVD, though- especially for cartoons."
What makes you say that? I'll certainly grant you that early DVDs were far inferior to the best that laserdisc has to offer (Twister, SE7EN before the 2-disc remaster, Red October, Face Off and so on), and if by "cartoons" you mean the horribly over-processed Snow White and Lion King DVDs then I'll agree there, too, but for most things I'd take the DVD over the laserdisc any day, and twice on Sundays. Even the traditional Gold Standard of laser image, the SE Star Wars Trilogy box, is utterly, utterly blown away by the image on the new DVDs.